The whole student loan system is designed to confuse people and maximize profits. They WANT the interest to capitalize so they make more money off your kid. That's why they make it hard to figure out how to pay just the interest. The system is RIGGED against students!!!!

I want to thank everyone for their helpful advice! I called Great Lakes today and got it all figured out. They said I can make payments as a guest payer using my daughter's account number, and they added instructions on her account that additional payments should go to the unsubsidized loan interest first. The rep said this is actually pretty common and a smart strategy. Feeling much better about her loan situation now!

FOR THE RECORD: Yes, parents MUST complete their portion of the FAFSA for dependent students under the new system. Each contributor (parent) creates their own FSA ID and submits their section separately. The student portion alone is NOT a complete application for dependent students. This is a major change from previous years and causes a lot of confusion.

UPDATE: My brother finally got through to FSA! They confirmed he answered a dependency question wrong (he clicked yes on the "Are you a veteran?" question by mistake 🤦‍♂️). They're having him wait until the application fully processes (1-3 days) and then submit a correction to fix his dependency status. After that, our mom will get an email invitation to complete her portion. Thanks everyone for the help!

When I was dealing with my son's verification last month I called the Federal Student Aid hotline and eventually got through to someone who told me the tax document requests are batched and sometimes go out after initial processing. She said as long as you used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool originally it should transfer automatically without you having to do anything. Took about 10 days for his verification to complete then everything was good. Super annoying but worked out fine in the end.

my brother works in financial aid at a university and he says this is happening to TONS of people this year. the new fafsa system is just a mess tbh

UPDATE: The Department of Education just released a fix for this specific issue yesterday. If your spouse has an SSN but you don't, try these steps: 1. Log out completely and clear your browser cache 2. Have your spouse log in with their FSA ID first 3. Then have them select the "Complete contributor information" option 4. They should enter their information including SSN 5. Once they complete their section, then you can log back in to finish the application This bypasses the error that happens when trying to add a contributor from your account directly.

I faced this exact issue last month. The key thing that worked for me was making sure my husband's name was entered EXACTLY as it appears on his Social Security card, not as it appears on our tax return (which has his second last name included). Also, after creating the FSA ID, we had to wait a full 3 days before it would link properly. The system is very picky about these details for joint filers with one person lacking SSN. Hope this helps! The new FAFSA is so much harder for families like ours compared to previous years.

Just to give you a complete answer on your original question - when your son finally decides on a school, you don't need to remove the other schools from your FAFSA. The schools he doesn't attend simply won't use the FAFSA information. But the schools DO see all other schools you've added, so some people prefer to remove schools they're no longer considering once a decision is made.

One final important note for your summer semester planning: Make sure your son hasn't exhausted his annual loan limits from the previous terms. If he's already used his full annual Federal Direct Loan eligibility during fall/spring, he may not have loan eligibility remaining for summer unless he advances to the next grade level. This is particularly important for dependent students with the annual loan limits of $5,500 for freshmen, $6,500 for sophomores, and $7,500 for juniors and seniors. Pell Grant recipients may be eligible for additional summer Pell (sometimes called Year-Round Pell) if they enroll at least half-time in the summer term.